


will the stars align

by stonesnuggler



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, F/M, Rule 63, Soul Bond, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:27:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22044832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stonesnuggler/pseuds/stonesnuggler
Summary: Jack is prepared for when she bonds, whenever it happens. The missing key in her chest sliding in and hitting home. The dull aches of her partner when they stub their toe. Their elation of seeing their favorite team winning a game.She’s not prepared for Noah Hanifin. Not even a little bit.He isn’t prepared for her, either
Relationships: Jack Eichel/Noah Hanifin
Comments: 3
Kudos: 97
Collections: Hockey Holidays 2019





	will the stars align

**Author's Note:**

  * For [taxingme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/taxingme/gifts).



> happy holidays, taxingme! 
> 
> i've always wanted to write USNTDP boys, and i love a good soulmate AU, especially one in which noah hanifin is Dumb so out came this lil thing. thank you for the awesome prompts, i hope u like it as much as i liked writing it :)
> 
> huge thank you to e and l for the brainstorming and encouragement, i couldn't have done it without you.
> 
> title from natural by imagine dragons which is on a playlist on jack eichel's spotify playlist titled "hockey playlist"

Jack knows everything there is to know about bonds. 

Her parents have been bonded for longer than either of them can remember so there isn’t a side of bonding she hasn’t seen.

Sometimes it’s quiet, unspoken. Her mom handing something to her dad without so much as a glance. Her dad holding printed out directions in his lap and her mom following them perfectly. 

Other times, it’s fragmented sentences, half spoken statements that still make sense no matter how jumbled it sounds to Jack and her sister. 

More often than not, Jack finds out, it’s feelings.

There’s one day in particular where Jack’s dad had picked her up from school instead of her mom, which happened often enough that it wasn’t weird, but that time, Jack had felt that something was off. Her hours at the hospital were pretty fluid, almost entirely dependent on her patients and not her schedule.

“Where’s mom?” Jack had said.

Her dad just sighed, patted his chest right over his heart and changed the subject.

It was a simple gesture, something that Jack and Jessie had both learned to translate into ‘everything is just a little too much’. 

They were good together like that. Especially when they were teaching her everything they know.

So, she’s prepared for when she bonds, whenever it happens. The missing key in her chest sliding in and hitting home. The dull aches of her partner when they stub their toe. Their elation of seeing their favorite team winning a game.

She’s not prepared for Noah Hanifin. Not even a little bit. 

_X_

Jack officially meets Noah on a rainy morning in Ann Arbor, sun trying it’s hardest to peek through the clouds. 

She’s early for practice, which isn’t out of the ordinary, but this particular instance gets her there early enough to see the under-seventeens finish up practice. 

It’s a little weird, standing around the boards, looking in from the outside. When it’s Jack on the ice and someone else behind the glass, it always makes her feel a little like a fish at a pet store, waiting to get picked. 

The team is entirely different from when she was on it last year, which she guesses is really how it goes when you play up. 

“Didn’t take you for much of spy,” someone says behind her, and she almost jumps, but manages not to.

Instead, she turns on her heel, takes her other headphone out and looks up at the source of the voice. 

She knows of Noah – Boston area kids and all that – so it’s not too shocking to see him when she turns around. What she’s a little thrown off by is the lopsided smile and the rush in her chest that she can’t quite read. 

“Who ever said I was spying?” Jack manages, clearing her throat as the feeling settles. What did he take her for, then?

Noah laughs, just a little before holding his hand out.

“Noah,” he says as Jack takes it, grip firm as they shake. “Hanny, mostly.”

“Jack,” she says. “Eichs, but never Jackie.” 

The lopsided smile returns, the air around them stills, and Jack’s chest warms in a way she didn’t anticipate. 

When they take the ice later, Noah’s always in her orbit. He’s good and he knows it, just like Jack does. 

Knows that  _ she’s _ good, that is. 

Not that Noah isn’t, or that she doesn’t know that. She’s definitely aware of that, especially in the way that he’s always part of the pairing on the ice while her line is out. 

The time they spend together on the ice easily translates into off of it – while everyone groups off after their first practice as a team, heading to dinner or to someone’s billets for video games, Jack and Noah end up at a frozen yogurt joint. 

Jack knows she’s going to go for the mocha flavor, but even then, they both end up with a couple tester cups in their hands. Noah’s tried more than she has, bouncing back and forth between a couple, and for some reason, Jack keeps getting drawn to the birthday cake flavor when she knows she’ll hate it. She used to eat that after every loss last year, and even the thought of it makes her disgruntled.

She takes a sample of it anyway, and Noah hums.

“Oh, sick, I must’ve missed this,” he says, taking a full sized cup and putting it under the tap. Jack tastes the sample in her hand and shudders. “Birthday cake is my favorite.”

Jack groans. “Seriously?” 

“Yeah, dude,” Noah says, filling his cup, then bites off the little swoop on top. “Best flavor.”

“We’re not friends anymore,” Jack says, pushing away the fondness that’s settled in her chest. She throws her sample cup out. “You disgust me.”

“Shut up and put your cup on the scale,” he says, nudging her out of the way as he adds a ridiculous amount of sprinkles.

“I’m not paying for yours,” she says, adding a modest scoop of chocolate chips. 

Noah laughs, setting his cup on the scale next to hers. “I got this one.”

\- 

She wouldn’t go as far as to say they’re inseparable after that, but it’s a near thing. Their host families live down the street from each other, so it’s hard to find one without the other. The way they fit together is inexplicable to almost everyone.

All it takes is one roadie with Noah for it to make perfect sense to Jack.

Noah came with them for this trip, a couple of off-days in a row for the under-17s, and he’s definitely making the kind of noise that Donny likes to hear from the loaners. 

“Are you fucking  _ kidding _ !” Noah’s barking as yet another penalty against Green Bay goes uncalled. Jack’s on the ice and can hear him clear as a goddamn bell. “What a  _ joke. _ ”

Jack raises her arm for a change as Green Bay’s d-pair dumps it, and hurries to the bench, chest heaving. Larks is trying to say something to him to calm him down, but she’s not getting anywhere with it, so Jack rolls her eyes and shimmies between them.

“Shut up, Hanny,” she says, gnawing on her mouthguard. “You know the home stripes suck here.” 

“It’s fucking bullshit,” he says again, and Jack’s sure that if it were possible, there’d be steam coming out of his ears.

And like, she gets it. This is the third penalty they’ve blatantly missed calling all night– Jack’s pissed, too. 

Noah, though. Woof.

Seeing him angry just makes the anger settle deeper into her chest, even though she doesn’t it want it there.

Finally catching her breath, she pushes in close to him, connected from the shoulder down and the anger… vanishes. 

“Chill, Hanny,” she says, elbowing him until he looks at her. He doesn’t, not until the play blows dead. 

When he does, something  _ clicks _ , just for a second. 

If she hadn’t been told exactly what to look for, what signs to keep an eye out for, she would’ve missed it. But she didn’t. She didn’t miss it, and before Jack can panic, he’s looking back out at the ice.

“I’m fine,” Noah says, and Jack knows. She  _ knows _ he’s fine, how does she  _ know? _

“I know,” she says, still looking at him.

_ Look at me _ , she thinks.  _ Hanny. Come on. Just look at me. _

He doesn’t. 

Jack looks out to the ice, and despite having already caught her breath from that last shift, she finds it hard to breathe. 

-

Noah hasn’t mentioned it, the click. 

It takes a couple days for Jack to realize that, like everything she’s ever learned or known or picked up on is just  _ gone _ .

Maybe it just didn’t hit him yet, she figures. Or maybe he’s part of the small percentage that remains Unlinked. Her uncle is like that – he’s not physically capable of forming an official bond, but his bondmate still found him in the end.

Jack hopes that Noah will find her soon. She believes that he will.

She’d love to say that she  _ knows _ it happened, you know? She wants nothing more than to call her parents and tell them, to feel the warmth of her bondmate’s connection from her chest to the tips of her toes.

It’s almost everything she’s ever wanted since she was a little girl, second only to getting drafted. 

The uncertainty is killing her, but she shelves it and keeps telling herself it’ll be worth it in the end. 

They’re at Jack’s some weeks later, Noah lazing on her bed playing a game on her phone while Jack starts to think about packing for holiday break, but also for Sweden. Noah’s coming with her, to Boston at least. After days of trying to coordinate flights, they ended up picking the same one anyway.

He’s not coming to Sweden, though, and she can tell how upset that makes him.

Not upset enough to ignore her, but she honestly wouldn’t blame him if he did. She would probably ignore him, but she’s never been the most mature of the two of them anyway.

She pauses at her closet, thumbing through her suits, finally settling on one of her favorite navy ones, but also grabbing for the deep purple one she saves for special occasions. 

“I was thinking the –”

“Purple for opening ceremonies,” Noah finishes, not even looking up from his phone. “Then do blue for–”

“Yeah, exactly,” Jack says, moving them both from her closet. The blue goes to her game day pile, and the purple to the hooks on her door. After tossing a couple more things into various bags, she lays across the foot of her bed, letting Noah shift so his feet rest on her legs.

“I think Boston is going to be there,” she says, almost an afterthought as she lets her hands rest on his ankles.

Noah hums, nudges her with his heel. “College?” 

“ _ University _ ,” Jack says, offense evident in her tone. “Not all of us decide to go to the lesser Boston school at the ripe age of thirteen, Hanny.” 

Noah ignores the bait, but Jack feels satisfied anyway, fondness bubbling in her chest. 

“Only a half hour on the T,” she says, pulling out her own phone and opening Instagram as a second thought. She’s not even sure if that’s right. The last time she was on both campuses was a couple years ago, on visits with her dad. They did both in one day and then went to a Sox game, which was equal parts wicked as it was exhausting. 

It feels right though, and not in the obtuse way where she wants to be right.

Noah sits up, then, a little suddenly. “Did you just look that up?” 

Jack stops, turns to look at him and swallows. “No?”

“Bro, look,” Noah says, turning his phone to face her.

Sure enough, he’s got Google Maps up, two broad pins from Boston College to Boston University. 

Jack’s heart picks up a bit, mouth going dry. He’s looking at her, like right at her and it’s still like the lock is jammed, not sliding clean and opening the bond.

She’s starting to doubt it’s him at all.

-

Jack comes back from Sweden with a hangover and nothing else to show for three weeks across the fucking globe. 

Noah’s at the Ice Cube when they pull up, one of the only Program kids that doesn’t have a billet sibling on the bus. 

If anything solidified the fact that she was home, it’s that. Hanny, stupid lopsided smile as bright as the sun, too sunny and too happy for the ache deep in Jack’s chest, but appreciated nonetheless.

“Welcome home,” he says and she sinks into it, wanting nothing more than to fall asleep right here, jet lag be damned. 

It’s annoying, being away for this long, throwing her fucking heart and soul and everything else into something that resulted in another fucking one-up on Jack for Canada’s golden girl. Connor McDavid can kick fucking rocks. Jack hopes she has a hangover so bad that she can’t see straight on her flight back to Bumfuck, Pennsylvania. 

“I want to sleep for thirty years,” she says into his chest, vulnerable and aching and fucking  _ beat _ . 

“Let’s get home then,” Noah says, and Jack can’t be bothered to think of a better idea.

They’re at his billets soon after, and Jack’s under his covers immediately after that, hood pulled over her head.

She reaches out, intending to pull him down to her – it’s been a long tournament without her best friend, so sue her – but her hand collides with his as it’s holding out a cold Gatorade. 

“Fucking beauty,” she says, sitting up despite her head’s protest and taking a long drink from it. “I’d die without you, Hanifin.” 

Noah laughs as he climbs under the covers next to her. “I know.” 

She drinks half of the bottle before it starts becoming counter productive. Noah takes it as soon as she caps it and holds his arm out, an invitation for her to curl into his side.

It’s nice, getting to have this. Sometimes after games they’ll end up like this, Jack’s hand carding through Noah’s hair as they catch up on whatever show they’re binging. 

Just as she’s thinking about it, Noah’s hand comes up and takes her hood off, scratching at her scalp.

If she weren’t so goddamn tired, maybe she’d take that as a sign, but this time, she just lets it lull her to sleep.

-

By the end of February, things are back to normal, at least with the schedule. The weird feeling of a bad tournament is still there, but so is Noah, playing up with the under-eighteen’s more often than not.

So, maybe things aren’t normal, because Jack’s still got that displaced feeling in her chest, and Noah is still none the wiser.

Whatever, it’s fine. That’s not at the forefront of her mind right now, mostly because today fucking sucks and she didn’t have any idea why until the cramps started. 

“Eichel!” Coach calls, after Jack goes for her third water break in twenty minutes, willing the pain to stop. “Working you hard enough? Seem to be pretty glued to that bench.” 

“Sorry, Coach,” she says, splashing herself with the bottle she was drinking from. Her stomach still hurts like hell, but she can make it until she gets back to the room and her emergency bottle of Pamprin. 

Noah, on the other hand, cannot make it, for whatever reason. 

As soon as she’s skating back to the drill, Noah’s bolting off the ice, a little green in the face when he takes his helmet off. Jack’s own stomach lurches in sympathy as she hears the door to the locker room slam shut.

“Anyone else going down?” Coach asks, and if Jack didn’t know better, she’d think it was a real question. Nobody says anything, so Coach nods. “Good. Everyone to the far red, and find a partner.”

By the time they’re off the ice, Noah’s gone without a trace other than a text to Jack.

**Hanny 🦅** 1:11pm

shouldve listened to u abt the sushi last night. i feel fuckin gross.

**Jack** 2:08pm

i’ll trade u that for the bear trying to claw its way out of my uterus

**Hanny 🦅** 2:11pm

woof. guess ive got sympathy pain

Jack just sighs. He has no idea how right he is.

-

They play their last game of the season the day that Jack commits to Boston University, so Gryz throws a party. 

It’s just the Program kids and a fully furnished basement rec room, but Jack feels oddly sentimental about it all. 

Like, in a dingy basement surrounded by gross teenage boys – but also equally gross Program girls that grew up with the gross teenage boys – is where she chooses to be sentimental? 

But, hey. They’re a family, and they have been since the second Jack stepped into the Ice Cube as a hard-headed sixteen-year-old. 

She winds up on a couch on one side of the room, accidentally with the other girls – Hartzy had called her over, but she and Hino are a package deal, and Larks was there because it was close to an outlet and she hasn’t gotten off of FaceTime with Werenski for about twenty minutes now.

Jack’s zoned out of whatever Ryan is saying until she pokes Jack in the thigh. 

“Have you?” Ryan is saying, and Jack downs her beer, realizing that she is incredibly lost and in dire need of whiskey. 

Jack tilts her head. “Have I what?” 

“Bonded, dumbass,” Ryan says, like it’s obvious. Next to her, Vinnie goes a little pink, and Jack wonders just how much she missed while she was in space there. 

She swallows instead of answering, suddenly a little lost for words. Ryan is waiting her out, because she’s an asshole. 

“It’s, uh,” she starts, then clears her throat. “I mean, kind of? But I don’t think he–”

“Yo, Eichs, you empty?” she hears from behind her, turning to find Noah with a solo cup in hand. He’s flushed in the way a couple of drinks will do to him, shirt already clinging to him with how warm the basement is. 

“Uh,” she manages, shaking the Natty Light can in her hand which is, in fact, empty. “Yeah, but what is that?”

“Jack and Coke,” he says, already holding the cup out to her. 

She smiles, grabbing it and taking a sip. “You a mind reader, now, Hanny?”

“Nah,” Noah shrugs, lips tugging into a smirk. “Just a hunch.”

There’s something in his eyes as she looks up at him, and she’d almost call it a moment if it weren’t  _ ruined _ by Ryan kicking at her ankle and Thatcher calling Noah in the other direction. 

“Kind of, huh?” Ryan says, peering at Jack over her own cup. 

Jack pales and takes a big drink from her cup, wincing at the syrupy feel of it. 

“Kind of,” she repeats, looking over her shoulder at Noah.

This time, he’s looking back.

-

Noah moves in to his Boston College dorm a week before Jack moves in at BU, so of course she helps.

It doesn’t seem like anyone thinks much of it, but that’s proven wrong when she catches Noah’s mom looking at them fondly as they bicker over where Noah should be keeping his hamper.

“It’s not like I’m even going to use it,” Noah grumbles, putting it in his closet before Jack takes it right back out.

“Thatch is going to kill you if you don’t,” Jack says, setting the hamper under his lofted bed, next to his desk. “Death by goalie would probably be pretty fuckin’ weird.”

Noah rolls his eyes, but the hamper stays put.

She and Noah have the last of his boxes and are on the way down the hall to his room when Noah underestimates a turn and smacks his elbow right into his doorframe. 

To his credit, he manages to get the boxes down on his desk before groaning, rubbing at his arm where he hit it. Jack almost wishes he would’ve dropped it, just for the comedic aspect, but she only has the thought for a couple of seconds before a dull, throbbing ache starts at her elbow and makes its way down her arm.

Noah catches her as she’s rubbing at her elbow, quirking an eyebrow, but she just shrugs. 

“Sympathy pain, I guess,” she manages, heart racing.

Something like that.

-

Jack knows the call from Noah is coming before her phone even rings.

There’s no way she couldn’t, not with the feedback loop of anger she felt after she got up, knowing damn well that not all of it was hers. A hit like that from a guy that much bigger than her, clean though it might have been, was like the fucking Bat Signal to Noah.

He’s outraged when she answers.

“Hello caller, you’re on the air,” Jack says, putting her phone on speaker as she unwraps the ice pack from her rib cage. It’s a good bruise, at least. She’ll have to track this one, see how weird it gets over the next few days.

“What kind of  _ bullshit  _ was that,” Noah says, then launches right into a five minute rant about spatial awareness (which Jack has) and knowing where the puck is (which Jack didn’t have) and --

“Like, Jesus Eichs,  _ my _ side hurts just from watching that,” he says, finally winding down. 

Jack laughs, just once, a little sharp. 

“Of course it does,” she says, and she doesn’t mean to be pissed, really. She’s mostly made her peace with Noah’s end of the bond being radio static by now, but this? 

It’s a little infuriating. 

“Listen, Hanny, I’ve gotta go,” she says, scrubbing a hand over her face. “I’m exhausted. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” 

He’s quiet for just a second, but he can barely get out “Wait, Eichs–” before Jack kills the call.

She leaves the phone on the counter as she washes her face, puts an icy-hot patch on her side, and hopes he doesn’t call back.

He doesn’t.

The next morning, she shoots him a Grade A Jack Eichel Apology Text (“ _ I reloaded ur dunkin card. sorry for being an ass.”) _ and they’re good as new.

**Hanny 🦅** 8:11am

just wanna make sure my fave girl is ok ❤️ sorry for pushing a button

There’s a photo attached, him with a huge iced coffee from Dunkin’, even though it’s going to snow later. She sends back a heart, and hopes his side doesn’t hurt too much.

-

Jessie bonds while they’re in Cancun for the first week of Jack’s winter break, a freak right-place-right-time connection on one of their last days. 

His name is Johnny, he’s from Lowell, and their parents are completely starry-eyed with him. He’s got a lot of stories that have Jessie hanging off of his every word and Jack rolling her eyes, ignoring the ache in her chest.

Their mom is charmed, as Jack suspected she would be when either of them bonded. Jessie spends the whole day with him on their last day there, and by dinner, her mom has gotten teary-eyed about the whole thing, like, three times.

Jack’s got that unsettled feeling in her chest again, thick and wading like she’s just so close to top speed but can’t get there. It’s not jealousy, she doesn’t think, but it’s not exactly  _ different _ . 

Maybe she’s wondering when it’ll finally be her turn. When she’ll stop feeling like she’s already gotten there and is just waiting for the rest of the world to catch up. 

Well, maybe not the rest of the world. Just one very big part of hers.

Jessie’s still not back to the room she and Jack are sharing by the time Jack’s settling into bed, and she’s not too tired yet, so she does the easy thing and calls Noah.

“Speak of the devil,” Noah says by means of greeting, followed by rustling and background noise that’s probably him getting up and moving from the family room.

“That’s me,” she says, the day’s weird tension melting away. “‘Sup, Hanny?”

“‘Sup yourself,” he says, and Jack can hear the soft click of his door shutting. “Everything good?” 

Jack sighs, stretching out under her duvet. “ _ Oh _ , yeah. You’ll never guess what just happened.”

Noah snorts. “What, did Jess bond or something?” 

Jack stops. 

There’s no way that anyone else told him. Like, sure they’ve joked about it – Jessie is even more impatient than Jack when it comes to bonding – but this is too real.

“How the fuck did you know that,” Jack says, fully awake, heart pounding in her chest. 

“Woah,” Noah says, placating. “It was just a guess, Eichs. I had a hunch.” 

“God, would you stop  _ saying  _ that,” Jack says before her mind has the wherewithal to stop her mouth. “It’s not just a hunch, Noah. How can you not fucking  _ feel _ it?” 

Noah’s quiet for a second, long enough for tears to sting in the back of Jack’s eyes.

“Jack,” Noah starts, then stops again, no sound but him breathing. 

Jack’s holding her own breath.

She shouldn’t have said anything. It’s like an unwritten rule of bonding. The second you plant the seed, it could form a false positive in the person’s head and they’ll feel disconnected for the entire “bond”. 

She’s not entirely sure what would be worse; Noah bonding to her because she willed it to happen, or not bonding to her at all.

“Please forget I said that,” she manages on a whoosh of breath. “I shouldn’t have called you. Fuck, I’m sorry.” 

“Jack,  _ wait, _ ” Noah says, and she stops, hands shaking as she holds up her phone. “What’s going on?” 

“ _ Nothing _ , and that’s the whole fucking  _ issue, _ ” she says. “Nothing is going on. Forget it.” 

“If you’re–”

“I am,” she finishes, hates how easy it is to end his sentences. “Can we please talk about something else now?” 

“Yeah, Eichs,” Noah says, a little confused, but he launches into a story about Lily and Cole anyway. 

She’s not sure how long he’s been talking by the time her eyes start to flutter shut, but something has settled in her chest enough to make that easy for her, lulled by the easy timbre of his voice. 

“Still with me?” Noah says, voice pitched soft like he’s making sure nobody else can hear him. Must be late then. 

Jack hums, adjusts her phone. 

“I should probably sleep,” she says, punctuates it with a yawn. “Early flight.” 

“Coming into Logan?” he asks, and Jack hums.

“‘Round 10, I think,” she confirms. “Don’t get any ideas.”

“Never had one of those in my life,” Noah says, and a smile tugs at Jack’s lips.

It’s quiet for a beat before Jack yawns again.

“I’ll let you go,” Noah says, and Jack’s heart lurches, it’s own personal ‘ _ no.’  _ “Text me before your flight?”

She hums again, not able to say much more, and he laughs a little. 

“Night, Eichs,” he says, and Jack’s chest feels  _ really  _ warm all of a sudden, in an overwhelming kind of way that she can’t even begin to explain.

She doesn’t say anything for a beat, shocked still by the feeling, but eventually says goodnight and presses the end button on her line, a little rushed.

She goes to move her phone to her night stand, but the second she sits up –

_ Click. _

“Fuck,” she says, wide awake, her hands trembling. “ _ Fuck, _ wait, shit.” 

Her phone is ringing, and she knows exactly why. 

“I am so sorry,” is the first thing Noah says, and still the warmth spreads. “God, I can’t believe it took this long.  _ Jack. _ ”

She thinks she could hear him say his name like that for ever, almost like a prayer.

“Noah,” she breathes, still shaking, tears gathering to fall.

“How long,” Noah says. It’s not a question.

Jack sighs, watery and thin. “Fuck, I don’t know. Early our first season.”

“Fuck,” Noah says, and his guilt is pooling deep in her stomach, sour and twisting. “And you just… How did I not–”

“I didn’t–” she starts, trying to let him know it’s okay. They’re here now, they  _ got here.  _

“Holy shit,” Noah says, amazed. “It’s like my entire chest is on fire, is that supposed to be happening?” 

Jack laughs, a little sniffly. “It might stay like that until I see you.” 

“Worth it,” he says, and Jack can finally,  _ finally  _ feel him smile as he says it.

-

She doesn’t sleep much, even after they hang up two hours later as the sun starts to rise.

-

Jack doesn’t mention anything to her parents, not at first anyway, but when she buys wifi on the plane, her mom starts to get suspicious.

“Who’s so important that you’re buying twenty dollar wifi on a four hour flight?” she prods, and Jack just knows that her cheeks have gone ruddy.

She doesn’t mean to tell her mom the whole story, really, but once she starts, she just… can’t stop. She runs through everything – the half connection, Noah showing all the signs but not feeling anything she was, the ‘hunches’ he would have. Her mom looks amused, just as charmed now as she was about Jessie and Johnny.

“And then last night he guessed about Jessie before I could even say anything,” she says, huffs a laugh as she pauses. “I kind of snapped at him, almost mentioned everything but I didn’t want to plant it, you know?”

“Oh, baby,” her mom says, grabbing Jack’s hand, and Jack can’t stop her eyes from watering. “There was nothing to plant since there was already something growing.” 

She knows that, now. 

-

Noah’s at the baggage claim by the time the Eichel’s get there, despite Jack telling him  _ several  _ times to stay in Norwood, that she would meet him there later.

The bond spoke for her, she’s assuming, because everything else in her just wanted to be close to him, so here he is. 

She keeps it together and doesn’t do anything dumb or rom-com like run into his arms, but she is teary-eyed by the time she gets close to him. Her entire chest feels like sparklers, popping and snapping and warming every inch of her, all the way to the tips of her ears.

She doesn’t say anything, just wraps her arms around his waist and pulls him in, breathing for what feels like the first time in over a  _ year _ when his arms wrap tight around her, his cheek pressed to her temple.

Her heart is a feedback loop of content and joy and warm and  _ Noah _ that she doesn’t care that she’s full on crying at the baggage claim of fucking Boston Logan International Airport. 

She pulls back, just enough to see his face and  _ God _ is that a sight for sore eyes. He’s crying, too, eyes rimmed red and eyelashes stuck together. He’s even beautiful like that, fucker. 

“Welcome home,” he says, pressing a kiss to her forehead.

Yeah, she thinks, finally tilting her head up to finally, _finally_ kiss him.

_Home_.

_X_

A year into her bond with Noah, Jack would like to think she knows  _ almost  _ everything there is to know about bonds.

Sometimes, it’s subtle. A soft thought here and there, a jolt of contentment at the simplest things Noah finds or sees or reads. 

Other times it’s consuming, a heady feedback loop of  _ want _ and  _ lust _ and the craving for touch so visceral they don’t even need each other’s voices to get off.

More often than not, Jack confirms, it’s feelings.

Noah’s got more than enough of those, and that? 

That, she was prepared for.

**Author's Note:**

> \- other girls are dylan larkin, ryan hartman, vinnie hinostroza and zach werenski.  
> \- jack's mom knew it was noah the first instance that jack ever brought him up, knew they had bonded the second they got on the plane. she's an icon.  
> \- noah probably spent the entire time he didn't know about the bond confused as to why he could feel jack's exasperation, the poor dumbass.


End file.
